In my update from the other day I wrote about my annual fantasy baseball league being delayed, most likely. I had read where mlb.com had bought rights to stuff like this, and was looking to license out rights to some places.
Looks like the Yahoo league I use has been caught up in all this. The one thing that I always insisted upon is that the game be free. No way am I paying to do this. The moment I have to pay is the moment it’s no fun anymore.
Anyway, there’s more to this situation than I was aware of. Adam Morris wrote about this over on his Rangers blog, and since he’s essentially already invented the wheel on this writeup, I won’t try too – just go read his entry. An enlightening read.
UPDATE: There’s also another great read on rotoworld talking more about what’s going on, including some pretty scary bully tactics from MLB. Check it out.
Roster Transaction
- P Ryan Wing signed to a 1 year contract [
link ]
Ramon Nivar resigned for 2005
Rangers sometimes second baseman / sometimes outfielder Ramon Nivar was resigned today for the major league minimum. Not sure where he fits in anymore with all the other prospects we’ve picked up since he got his look. He’s likely a super utility guy at this point.
Speaking of this, the Major league minumum salary was raised from it’s figure of last year at $300,000 to $316,000. This increase was termed a “cost of living increase“. That’s pretty amusing, that they can’t get by on $300,000 and need a cost of living increase of 5.3%! Can I get something like that, please? I guarantee you I need the money more than they do.
A Few Site Changes
This afternoon I made a few site changes. Nothing truly major, but I thought I’d point it out.
1) I eliminated the “Ballparks” section. It was something where I was going to have a page about all 30 ballparks, and some older ones. I started it like 4 years ago, and it never got anywhere, really. So I just up and deleted the minimal work I had done on it. You can find a ton of ballpark info here.
2) I updated the Links page to have some more current information, and reorganized it a bit.
3) I redid the Ballpark in Arlington Page, as I accidentally deleted it when I deleted the ballpark info in Item 1.
4) I rewrote all of the text on the intro page to my Seat Selector page, as I will be having another update to that hopefully before the season starts, with some more new pictures of non seating areas of the park.
5) Some miscelleanous background information relative to server operations – in other words, things you wouldn’t see. :)
Looking forward to the new season – pitchers and catchers report next week! Yay! :)
Roster Transaction
- OF/IF Ramon Nivar signed to a 1 year contract
($316,000 if he makes the majors)
My Annual Fantasy Baseball League
As regular visitors to my site know, I’ve run a fantasy baseball league for the last several years over at Yahoo’s baseball fantasy sports site. It was free, and for me, was a fun fantasy league (meaning it wasn’t deathly serious).
Anyway, a month or so ago, there was an announcement that MLB.com had gained the rights to MLBPA (or some such stuff, I forget the deal exactly now), but the bottom line is that it gave ’em a monopoly on fantasy baseball. They were allowed to sublicense the information back out to others so they could do their own things, though. An interesting thing is that the MLB Players website (which was http://www.bigleaguers.com will be taken over by MLB.com and will be called http://www.mlbplayers.com. Thing is, BigLeagers.com was run by Yahoo, so I’m not sure how all of this will play out.
I wrote Yahoo last week about this, and they responded back with their 2005 Fantasy offerings had not been set yet. Usually, they have the preliminaries set up so that folks can do their drafts and whatnot. I’m starting to think Yahoo might not have a league this year, which would stink, as I looked at MLB.com’s listed offerings, and none of them were like the league I used to run at Yahoo.
If I hear anything further on the matter, I’ll be sure and update.
Winter Warmup Recap
This morning I got hooked up to another good baseball news blog entitled “The Baseball Muse Blog”. It’s run by a guy by the name of Brandon Wilson. He lives in Flower Mound, Texas, and is a local Rangers fan. This past Saturday was the Rangers Winter Warmup, a “watered down” version of the old Winter Carnival that the Rangers used to put on (but was deemed too expensive by the current management – sigh). But I digress. I could not attend thsi year’s warmup, as I had a lot to do around the house to get ready for my Super Bowl party.
So it was with much delight this morning that I read Brandon’s blog entry on the Winter Warmup. It was extremely detailed. He appeared to attend all of the “Chalk Talk” sessions with various speakers (Jon Daniels, Buck Showalter, Orel Hershiser, & Mike Young. I suggest you take some time and read this, it was very enjoyable.
Canseco, the Rangers, & Steroids
Jose Canseco is trying to get some attention, now that he’s totally out of baseball. Several reports this morning say that some claims from his upcoming book “Juiced” say that former Rangers were introduced to steroids by him. Some of the claims he makes were that he introduced Pudge, Raffy, & Juan Gonzalez to steroids when they were all teammates on the Rangers in 1994. He also claims that George W Bush (who was owner of the team at the time) “must have known” about the steroid usage. He also claims to have personally injected Mark McGwire with steroids, and that he, McGwire, & Jason Giambi all did that together while they were all with the A’s.
Rangers management over the weekend seemed to make a point that the current administration of the team wasn’t around when all this was alledged to happen (they weren’t), and the GM at the time (current TV broadcaster Tom Grieve) said on Monday morning that Jose’s comments were a joke, and that he’s at a new level of embarrassment, also calling the use of George W’s name a complete cheap shot. Even Rusty Greer came out and said he never saw anyone use them in his 11 years as a Ranger.
Now I haven’t read the book yet (it isn’t scheduled to come out till Feb 21st), but it seems to me at this point that he’s trying to go “Uh, I did it – everyone else did, so I’m not such a bad guy”. Jose hasn’t exactly been the model citizen the last few years, and my religion dictates that I should believe people and be nice to them, but it really seems like an attempt to make a few bucks by raising allegations in a book that aren’t exactly true. However, I can’t disprove them either – I wasn’t there, nor I suspect is anyone else who might read these words of mine. It just all seems a bit “out there”, even given the current bruhaha in the last 12 months over steroids in baseball. Don’t also forget Canseco’s old spousal abuse charges from the past – just go to Google and search for ‘Canseco “spousal abuse”‘ – you’ll see it.
Here’s a few links about this steroid stuff from the various local newspapers this morning:
DMN Article 1 | DMN Article 2 | Ft Worth Star Telegram
Rangers sign Pedro Astacio, claim Bukvich
This afternoon, the Rangers signed pitcher Pedro Astacio to a minor league contract, although the terms have not been released yet as I write this (I’ll update when I find them out). Astacio on a minor leauge contract is probably worth a look. His numbers don’t really excite me (he’s only had two full season era’s under 4, and several over 6). Don’t expect much here on this one, he’s probably here to be used as an insurance policy for later on in the season assuming we need reinforcements.
We also claimed pitcher Ryan Bukvich off of waivers from the San Diego Padres. I don’t know much about Bukvich other than what I read in the Rangers press release, so I don’t have anything to add about him.
Both pitchers were put on the 40 man roster, which now means our 40 man is full. More details on this are available here.
UPDATE: It turns out the contract was actually a MAJOR league contract – no invite or anything like that. The contract is for $800,000 with another $2.2 million in various incentives. So no minor league deal here. That makes me a bit more wary of the deal. Nothing like throwing money at guys who are coming off of being hurt. Gotta love that.
Roster Transaction
- P Pedro Astacio signed to a 1 year contract [
link ] - P Ryan Bukvich claimed off waivers from San
Diego Padres
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